Young people should come and join the judiciary: Salman Khursheed

New Delhi: Former Union law minister Salman Khurshid has said the shortage of judges in the higher judiciary was “saddening”. He said that steps should be taken to address this issue. Khurshid, who is a senior Congress leader and a senior advocate, said that right to justice should get the attention similar to that of ‘Swachh Bharat’ programme and there were some “fundamental flaws” in the judicial system.

He was at the conclave of “The Rule of Law Convention 2018 on Judicial Reforms’ organised by the Bar Association of India here. He said,”We don’t have an appellate judiciary which is stable at the top. Number of Chief Justices serve a very short tenure.”Khurshid also talked about the issue of vacancies in the higher judiciary.

“The vacancies in the higher courts are very saddening.Young people should come and join the judiciary,” he said. “We need to take various steps to solve this issue at the earliest,” he said. “The CJI had to sit down and look at the paperwork and figure out what has to be done. All this is done by the solicitors the world over. This wastes time. This is a serious problem,” he said.

“I don’t understand why office of judge can be allowed to remain vacant. Why don’t we have a system where judges are appointed well before the date of retirement of the sitting judge,” he said.

At present, the Supreme Court has 25 judges, including the Chief Justice of India, against the sanctioned strength of 31 judges. Several High Courts in the country are also facing a shortage of judges.